The Guardian reports significant numbers of Liberal Democrat MPs are becoming frustrated by what they view as an overly cautious approach under Ed Davey, and the party’s failure to spell out a national message to voters.
Shortly after merger I was working in the Liberal Whip’s Office alongside Ed, Olly (now Baroness) Grender and Norman Baker when we went up to 2% in the polls. We cheered while Paddy joked we are no longer an asterix! Today we are in double figures despite more competition from other parties and forces.
I can recall a Parliamentary party meeting immediately after the 2005 general election when we won 51 seats, where Lorely (now Baroness) Burt suggested that what we lacked was a narrative for what we stood for, and despite some excellent work by Alan (now Lord) Beith on the subject of Liberalism, it is still awaiting an answer we can unite around.
The Guardian also reported that some MPs felt the Party was too academic. Isn’t that a good thing, so long as we don’t lose sight of the fact we aim to serve an electorate dominated more by practical than academic considerations.
I would suggest a more inhibiting factor to broader electoral success is the highly metropolitan (London centric) control of the party and its various decision-making bodies. My impression is that what comes out of the centre and the policy proposals put before conference often fail to address the needs of voters far from London, the Southeast and the big cities. We still have Liberal Democrat MPs outside these areas, but we could have far more if this were addressed, perhaps by giving our regional parties real powers.
As someone who was a sceptic of the coalition and a rebel on proposals not in the agreement, ironically, I look back on that period as probably the last example of stable government the country has enjoyed.
I don’t fully understand why we don’t point this out, now why we don’t use the preamble to our constitution to demonstrate how we were putting into practice what it preached during the coalition.
For example, raising the income tax threshold and introducing the pension triple lock, directly helped address our belief that none shall be enslaved by poverty.
The pupil premium to give all children a more equal start in their school life and was designed to ensure none should be enslaved by ignorance.
Same Sex marriage was a very obvious attack on the enslavement of conformity.
It was measures that weren’t in that agreement that damaged us. We took the blame even though one more of our MPs abstained or voted against tuition fees than backed Clegg’s three line whip – so more our MPs didn’t vote for tuition fees than did, the health and social care bill was a major change to our NHS after we had said there would be no major reorganisation, and of course on the welfare reforms that had not been thought through in relation to the unfair and illiberal bedroom tax.
Despite those criticisms and those in relation to “austerity” the actual cuts, particularly to local government, accelerated from 2015 once the Conservatives had a majority of their own.
I certainly agree with the call that we should be more assertive, but that’s so much easier said than done. Finding a policy like a penny on income tax to invest in education that proved successful under Paddy Ashdown is a prize worth looking for, but at the end of the day it is what we do on the ground, house by house, street by street, ward by ward, working with and for local communities that binds our brand of politics with the voters.
One MP is quoted: “At the moment it feels a bit like gruel. Ed needs to be mindful that it won’t take much more for colleagues to become really frustrated.”
Well, it’s not just gruel, it’s also damned hard work to defend what we have and to extend beyond the seats we won at the last election. To do that we all need to search for that narrative and popular policy proposal to add to our community activism championing our communities. I see no evidence that Ed doesn’t get that.
* Adrian Sanders is the Honorary President of Devon & Cornwall Liberal Democrats, and was the MP for Torbay from 1997 to 2015.
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29 Comments
Thank you for this v interesting post. I quite agree that the party should not be afraid to point out that our government was much more stable when the LibDems were involved, and that everything went rapidly downhill after 2015.
As for finding a “national voice” I don’t see why that’s so difficult for a Lb Dem party at this time. Our liberal democracy is under attack from Trump, Putin, Xi and Farage. This is a national emergency. Ed is already speaking out bravely. We need to headline the dangers of autocracy for the ordinary voter and champion the advantages of the rule of law.
We should be advocating developing the Coalition of the Willing into a formal defence pact.
And we should be backing our demands for increased defence spending with a clear proposal for paying for it – if necessary, 2p on income tax.
We have MPs and others with serious defence expertise and we need to hear more from them.
Thank you for an interesting and most timely article!
Might it be that the message is so much more than the (chief) messenger?
Might it aso help the citizens of the U. K., and, most impotantly, their children, if the L. D. message were to be analysed under, at least, the following:
1) Perceptions of reality and possibilty, avoiding both unquestioned conformity to current socio-political dominant fashions and the deadly dangers of the “tyranny of theory” [Abstract ideas overpowering actual realities eg. Austerity/Neoliberalism]
2) Message structures which are detailed and embedded in realites which make the message valid and attractive
3) Message contents which are both imaginitive and, perhaps over time, achievable and, so essentially, supportive and enabling for all of our society
4) Lively delivery which is genuine, attention attrtacting and, mostly, memorable.
Currently, it could be said that “Labour, Conservatives, Reform and the Liberal Democrats share a worldview in which wealth is left largely untouched and public ambition is kept within tightly policed boundaries.” [From Richard Murphy]
Austerity/Neoliberalism is in its death spasms with wealth and actual power ever more distributed/grabbed so that our society is increasingly unfair and unstable.
Might an essence of Liberal Democracy be the adventure of increasing real democracy to achieve a kind, sustainable and lively balance between “Freedom To” and Freedom From”?
“I can recall a Parliamentary party meeting immediately after the 2005 general election when we won 51 seats, where Lorely (now Baroness) Burt suggested that what we lacked was a narrative for what we stood for, and despite some excellent work by Alan (now Lord) Beith on the subject of Liberalism, it is still awaiting an answer we can unite around.”
I deliberately avoid discussing policies because I believe that they are secondary to the promotion of a clear image of what we stand for. I have already referred to this need many times (as have others).
“Reform” is, unfortunately, a wonderful marketing name – people attribute whatever they like to it. For us, however, our name conveys next to nothing to the vast majority of voters.
That does not mean our name is wrong – but it does mean that we need to continually spell out what the party’s philosophy and overall aims are – to which policies are but the supporting detail.
It baffles me as to why this is not done. Zooming in on policies to alleviate this or that gripe without placing them in the context of an overall approach and attitude towards our society as a whole means that the party often looks merely opportunist and extraordinarily lightweight. I suggest it is also politically debilitating.
As someone who joined the Grimond Liberal Party in 1961 (and was employed at Party Headquarters in 1964/65), I’ve experienced a lot of joy as well as sadness during events over the following years (during which I was elected/re-elected six times as a Liberal/Lib Dem Councillor …… well outside ‘Middle England’). Could say, “Been there, seen it, got the tea-shirt !”
I’m afraid I can’t agree with Anton Acton that, “everything went rapidly downhill after 2015”. In my experience everything ‘went rapidly downhill’ after 2010….. and it wasn’t just about tuition fee promises. Remember for example the ‘bedroom tax’ ?
According to the House of Commons Library, there has been a trend of rising demand for food parcels in the last 15 years. Trussell (formerly Trussell Trust), an anti-poverty charity running a network of food banks across the UK, distributed around 60,000 emergency food parcels in 2010/11. In 2024/25 this had increased to 2.89 million, which I saw this at first hand as Chair of my local Trussell Foodbank……. and despite the fact that I handed a personal copy of the Alston UN Report on poverty in the UK to Ed Davey in 2019. I have yet to hear him quote it.
With Local elections coming up, can I humbly suggest Ed visits target seats and concentrates on the most worrying issue, namely, the NHS. Every seat will have a different issue, but Ed’s caring experience will go down well. As a party the LibDems can either attack the deficiencies of the NHS or be positive in what can be done.
Matthew Parris in the Times today following recent defections.
‘What luck, then for the Conservatives! What an opportunity for Badenoch! Between leftish ninnies like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves and “right-wing” clowns like Farage and his new ex-Tory best friends yawns a huge hole at the centre of British politics. It’s where tens of millions of us sit: homeless, worried, ready – even eager – to respond to a unifying message from a sensible centre-right party.
I think Ed and a decent number of the Parliamentary party gets this.
I’ve been looking a bit at Jo Grimond. One view – easily found on the web is ”
Grimond was clearly a ‘small state’ liberal. And he was always a hawk on public spending: he criticised Thatcher for not being more aggressive in terms of cutting state expenditures. He savaged what he called the ‘conservative state socialist wing’ of British politics. For him, the economic role of the state was to control spending and inflation, and to wage continuous war against the monopolistic tendencies of business activity. He was pro-market, not pro-business. He strongly believed that market-led growth contributed more to human welfare than welfare states.
But the best way to define Grimond’s liberalism is in terms of opposition not to the state but to all forms of concentrated power. His liberalism was anti-corporatist. He fiercely opposed the power of closed-shop trade unions. He demanded a shrinking of the state, including a shift towards greater means-testing of benefits; he called for significant devolution of power to Scotland and Wales. But he was also sceptical of big business and worried about the power of commerce in a consumer society.”
Lots to get our teeth into there, though the environment also needs to be factored in.
More seriously, geopolitical events seem to demand a simple message as follows:
Britain can no longer rely on the US. We need new economic and military alliance with the European States, Australia and Canada as soon as possible. Joining the Single Market and Customs Union should be an easy win to increase economic growth.
We need to increase military spending urgently (skilled jobs) and to combat Putin/demonstrate independence from Trump.
We need to press on with net zero as quickly as possible both for environmental reasons and so as to reduce dependency on Russian, US and Middle Eastern hydrocarbons. If we invest in the grid and reform the pricing system prices might even come down too, helping on the cost of living crisis, and more jobs
Trump and Farage’s antics demonstrate the importance of securing human rights for every one whatever their race, colour creed or sexuality. No departure from the ECHR.
Care, as well as increasing human dignity, should free up the pressure on the NHS.
I think Ed Davey is a clever leader of the Lib Dems. He does not want to alienate sections of the vote.
I think if there is a further decline for Labour there could be a new Labour PM.
I think Alistair Carns would be a interesting leader of the Labour Party, if they have a leadership challenge. He was in the Royal Marines and has climbed Mount Everest. He would be fashionable in these times.
On this occasion I am going to agree with David Raw and Anton Act. From 2010 things definitely went appallingly downhill for the party as the consequences of the ill thought out coalition agreement – surrendering on tuition fees (which astonished the Conservative negotiating team), Bedroom Tax, NUS Reform etc etc.
From 2015 things went appallingly downhill for the country. First, Cameron found that stabbing the Lib Dems in the back after 5 years of Nick using us to act as his ‘Get out of Jail Free” card with his Eurosceptic wing, meant he had stabbed himself in the back by having to give them a referendum which he then lost. Then came Theresa May who Boris just ran rings around, which led the Blond Buffoon becoming PM, followed by his botched Brexit deal, then Liz Truss and finally Rishi Sunak.
Now we have Starmer opposite Reform and Farage Mark IV. Couple it all up with fifteen years of Trump, followed by Biden, followed by Trump and we really are in a mess.
I’m really struggling to see the point of this article, other than to obfuscate in defence of a leader that the author is presumably friendly with.
The article that it is responding to is this one:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/18/liberal-democrat-mps-frustrated-ed-davey-leader
Yet it doesn’t address a single one of the criticism of Ed’s leadership in the article.
Instead he randomly claims that our success is inhibited by communities being too metropolitan, which is objectively false. Our party has been on its death bed across urban Britain since the coalition, and the Greens look set to deliver the killing blow. This is because despite our former success in such areas when Labour was last in power and that Labour is now even more unpopular than they were back then, the national party has done precisely nothing to win them back.
So the fact that our committees have lots of members from big cities and inner London only proves that the geographic composition of our committees has little bearing on our success, it’s all on the leadership.
Then the article complains we aren’t talking about our successes in coalition. But that was 16 years ago.
And also mentions raising the tax threshold, even though Sunak and Reeves have scrapped it, and we aren’t calling to raise it back because we are too afraid of raising other taxes to pay for it. Oh dear.
‘the centre’ is fool’s gold – it offers up an ideal position, some solid ground to base your party on, but when you get there you find not only is it quicksand, but also half your followers have left you.
“Britain can no longer rely on the US.”
True. We probably never should have in the first place. We can only use our nuclear weapons with US co-operation. So what’s the point in having them?
“We need new economic and military alliance with the European States, Australia and Canada as soon as possible. Joining the Single Market and Customs Union should be an easy win to increase economic growth.”
We had an economic alliance with the USA until fairly recently. We still do have a military alliance. For all their faults the USA, bought more from us than we did from them. We didn’t have a customs union and we didn’t have a single market. We didn’t have to align our laws with theirs. We weren’t required to send representatives to their approved Parliament. We weren’t pressured on our fiscal policy. There was no suggestion we’d have to use their dollar.
So, even if we do have a new military alliance with the EU, why do we need a different sort of political and economic agreement with them? What does an easy win mean? From past experience it will just mean a larger trade deficit. So who is it an ‘easy win’ for?
All the comments on this thread are long and full of big words. That’s fine, and necessary in nuanced debate. On the doorstep, what do we say? I’ve tried (in my very limited experience) “We’re Liberal Democrats; we believe in Freedom, Fairness, and an open international outlook”. A good few people have perked up and responded that that’s a message they can buy into.
@Peter Martin
“So, even if we do have a new military alliance with the EU, why do we need a different sort of political and economic agreement with them?”
I think Geopolitics is offering the UK three options right now:
1 the freedom to do what Trump’s US tells us (see Trump’s U turn on the Chagos Isles). This is what Farage and his gang are offering.
2 floating around in the mid-atlantic ducking and weaving – the Singapore Option. Now Badenoch has decided to stand and fight Reform and endorse Trump on Chagos this could be where the Tories end up.
3 Military and economic cooperation with the European states and Australia/Canada so as to be able to be part of a power block able to resist Russia and Trump’s US. That could be inside or or outside the EU and it could be NATO or a new alliance, depending on how events pan out.
A sensible Tory party might end up looking for membership of the single market and customs union and continuance of NATO but no further – who knows what might happen? At this stage we should occupy that ground so as to force the Tories into the Singapore option, with joining the EU a project for a later date.
I have not been Ed’s biggest fan but I do think he is improving in his messaging and visibility. He is gaining from a clear anti-Trump and anti-Farage line, and the focus on the NHS as well as our long-standing focus on social care is well thought out. I’d like to see a far stronger line on the Middle East, and on the environment, and especially on the water companies where our policy is far too nuanced.
But others are right to complain about the lack of a central narrative or identity. I seem to recall that the main recommendation of the Thornhill review post 2019 was that the party leader’s main task was to develop exactly that. On that measure I am afraid Ed has not (yet) succeeded and it is increasingly necessary that he does. Matthew Parris’ article referenced above is right, there is no natural home for the centre right currently. However, I don’t think that means we need to chase those votes relentlessly, I actually believe there is more to be gained by remaining a radically centre-left party, based on the preamble, motivated by social justice, a desire for a better more inclusive politics with evidence based policies that reward innovation, and tackle the clear and present danger of climate breakdown, but without the nonsense policies of the Greens. Those centre right voters Matthew Parris identifies with will come to us anyway, where else can they go?
“Those centre right voters Matthew Parris identifies with will come to us anyway, where else can they go?”
Back to the Conservative Party obviously, provided the Conservative Party remains one of the two largest parties, and provided Badenoch is able to arrest their decline. She has now decided to stand and fight Reform rather than pander to Farage..
If the Lib Dems occupy the liberal centre/centre right (there is plenty of material in the party’s traditions and history to enable us to do that without embarrassment) we can help ensure Badenoch’s project fails and do ourselves a bit of electoral good in the process.
Luckily for us the Greens are saying the foolish impractical things, and Labour has managed to get itself in a terrible hole, no doubt resulting from the fact that socialism (including democratic socialism) is historically bankrupt.
“I certainly agree with the call that we should be more assertive, but that’s so much easier said than done.”
Most things are.
However, if you’re ” searching for that narrative and popular policy proposal” which sets LibDems apart from the rest then it’s going to be even less easy that it should be in the crowded part of the political spectrum which Lib Dems currently occupy.
You could move quite a way to the left and still be ‘right of centre’. Most Lib Dems want to be a left of centre party so a little more leftward motion could be in order.
So Matthew Parris thinks Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are “leftish ninnies”. They are just to the right of Lib Dems. Is he including you in that description too?
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024
It’s interesting to see what Matthew Parris actually has to say about us: “And we have the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps you’d forgotten them? Seventy-two — yes, 72 — MPs and absolutely no impact. No profile, no policies anyone can remember and no tough response to the tough problems government faces, led by a politician, Sir Ed Davey, who falls so far below the level of the leadership an insurgent centre party needs that it’s baffling he largely escapes criticism because (they say) he’s “a nice man”. Which indeed he is: more than nice, privately heroic, but political jelly.”
I know that I will always vote for the party, whose predecessor party I joined in 1972 and the fact that I live in Chesham and Amersham reinforces this. But I sometimes wonder what I would think if I was just an ordinary member of the public. There really is very little that stands out when you look at the party and what we stand for. At the end of Ed’s TV interviews I often find myself wondering what he really said.
I fear that Ed Davey, alongside others, would like to have it both ways. Given the chance to pitch for the centre-right pale-pink-tory vote and the centre-left moderate-progressive vote, he wants both. But will that really work?
Before Clegg, the Lib Dems defined themselves as centre-left. With Clegg, they shifted to centre-right. Since Clegg, there has been some dither. It doesn’t help. One argument for a progressive Coalition:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/how-could-a-coalition-work-79010.html
is that it would clearly get rid of that dither!
Would agree with the article. However a key thing is we need to be making that pitch to a number of decent tories to come across to us
Good article by Adrian.
One point not picked up in the comments is about everything being very London centric.
It is.
In fairness to Ed it always has been, even under Tim.
I understand that the rich pickings are in the SE and that we must do what we can to get more MPs, but …..
I feel very isolated here in the North East, a lot not of relevance.
An example is about transport. I remember the first time I stood as a candidate in 199 something and being in the High Street handing out “transport” leaflets that were all about trains. Even then we had a good train service to London and what people on the street were bothered about was a good bus service that was out of public hands.
It is still the case, and whilst I think there is something now in the depths of our policy, it is never talked about. But we aren’t London.
Just one tiny example, but I feel not part of a lot of what is talked about nationally in relation to people I meet.
Just wondering why I am still in the party. Thinking about it, I care passionately about a number of issues we have good policies about, but never hear about. Asylum & refugees; climate change; disability (not so sure about good policy there though); electoral reform and of course Europe and Internationalism. (I am a bit too grotty nowadays to be in bus queues!)
If I feel disconnected, no wonder the public do.
If the party was London-centric, we’d be targetting Labour seats. I’m not sure we even have any target seats in London. The lack of campaigns relevant to the North East doesn’t mean we have any relevant to London.
One question we do need to address is how we campaign locally after they abolish local government outside the big cities. How do we organise for mayoral elections or even for unitary authorities covering four and three halves big rural constituencies?
I think Ed is doing a good job and has a very able team of M.P’s (including mine !) but we do have the problem of breaking out of the southern, largely rural heartland that we dominate. It would be nice, for instance, to win back those Scottish seats we won under Kennedy. I don’t have any answers but I am sure our party strategists are working on it !
I agree with John Waller that Ed (and our MPs) need to visit our hopeful areas around the country and spend less time in Parliament. I said this at autumn conference at the Q&A and was not happy with the panel’s response. Although we are doing good things in Parliament the public do NOT get to know about it so some of that time is wasted.
Another part of our problem is the media. For example, I discovered from the BBC ‘more or less’ programmed this morning that the Telegraph, Mail and Express have been spreading huge lies about net zero that need to be constantly and strongly called out. Our MPs could do that with events and speeches around the country, not in the Parliamentaty bubble. Farage does not care about being criticsed for not spending enough time in Parliament because he knows that leading his grass roots movement is not affected one bit by that criticism.
This is vision (and from a Liberal too) we could well take on board, suitably adjusted to take into account the geogrpahical differences https://paulwells.substack.com/p/the-carney-doctrine
It might be that breaking through the media wall is simply hard to do.
Last week I saw BBC Business News, BBC2, and Sky News live-streaming Farage and Zahawi saying nothing very much. A few days ago my feed offers up Zack the Hypnotist saying something populist. The government was in hiding. Ms Badenoch seemed to be running a Traitors show. Nothing about the Lib Dems, SNP, or Plaid.
Actual politics is boring to the media class. Offer to discuss county council elections and they would ignore you. Offer a stunt and you might get on regional news. The more seriously you prepare for office, the less media coverage you will be offered. Hours spent on policy that would be so very useful in office are hours of no interest to the media pack. Ed is criticised for opposing the government, but he would be ignored if he constructively improved their policies.
It is encouraging to hear from voices who suggest changes to what we do. See you at York!
“You could move quite a way to the left and still be ‘right of centre’. Most Lib Dems want to be a left of centre party so a little more leftward motion could be in order”
Here’s a recent comment in the FT:
[Britain needs a] “forward-looking party that relishes the challenges of the future — from AI to the green transition, rather than rejecting net zero goals. It should be committed to fiscal discipline, stand up for the free market and free trade. And it must be unapologetically pro-business(*), as the Conservatives traditionally were, and ready to make the case for allowing elements of competition and market forces to reform public services.”
That describes the Liberal Democrats. It’s in an article headed “Why the UK needs a credible Conservative Party” here: https://www.ft.com/content/e1b4e617-75af-4714-bb51-49556f39a5f8 which is well worth a read, along with the comments below the line.
(*) for those who doubt the party is pro-business see for example: https://libdems.biz/about
From a recent article in the FT:
Here’s a recent article in the FT on this opportunity. Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall.
Despite those criticisms and those in relation to “austerity” the actual cuts, particularly to local government, accelerated from 2015 once the Conservatives had a majority of their own.
The UK didn’t regain control over our budget until December 2017 after being in Excessive Deficit Procedure since July 2008. Those “accelerated” cuts from 2015 were a result of the EU Council’s decision of June 2015 that previous fiscal consolidation (‘austerity measures’) had not been sufficient…
‘Council Decision (EU) 2015/1098 of 19 June 2015 establishing that no effective action has been taken by the United Kingdom in response to the Council Recommendation of 2 December 2009’:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32015D1098